Proper Genius (Detective Shoes)
by Pargoletta
Summary: Sherlock and John are summoned to find a missing ballet teacher, and Sherlock recalls the meeting of two extraordinary minds. Crossover with Noel Streatfeild's "Ballet Shoes."
1. Old Boys Network

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters of Arthur Conan Doyle, nor any of the various dramatic incarnations thereof. No profit is being made from this work.

Note: Welcome to this story! It's a crossover, so I think I'd better do a little bit of basic introduction for anyone less than familiar with one or both of the settings.

The Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training is a setting for many of Noel Streatfeild's books about children and the performing arts. It was established by one Madame Fidolia, formerly a star ballerina in the Russian Empire, who escaped to London after the Revolution. She founded the Academy probably sometime in the 1920s, initially as a ballet school. Over the years that Streatfeild wrote her books, the Academy evolved, transforming from a pure ballet school to a girls' all-around performing arts academy in the 1930s. By the 1940s, the Academy had gone co-ed and offered some academic classes. The last we hear of the Academy is in the early 1960s, when Madame is getting ready to retire, and the structure of the school has adjusted in other small ways. The Academy is shown to be a dynamic institution, changing with the times, and I've projected it forward a bit to see what might have become of it in the ensuing decades.

Sherlock Holmes has many skills and graces besides raw brain power. One might well wonder where and how he acquired some of those skills.

Finally, a note about the title. Streatfeild's first book for children was called _Ballet Shoes_. It was an enormous hit both in England and the United States. She gave her subsequent books interesting and unique titles, but her U.S. publishers retitled her books for publication in the U.S., probably for marketing reasons, to make them seem more like a series than they actually were. So _Curtain Up_ became _Theater Shoes_, _The Painted Garden_ became _Movie Shoes_, _Wintle's Wonders_ became _Dancing Shoes_, and on and on. Following in that tradition, this story also has two titles. Enjoy it, and I'll see you at the end.

* * *

**1. Old Boys Network**

* * *

Something shrilled in John's ear. He reached out to swat in the vague direction of his alarm clock, but the noise did not stop. It was melodic, John's sleep-addled brain supplied. A moment later, he registered that he was hearing his mobile, which he had left on the bedside table – oh, Christ, earlier this morning, upon collapsing into bed following the conclusion of an intense case with Sherlock. For a moment, John considered letting the call go to voicemail, but then he considered that it might well be his locum agency telling him that he had a job. He snaked one arm from beneath the covers and grabbed the mobile, squinting at the screen. There was no name, but the number was a familiar one.

"H'lo, Mycroft," John mumbled.

"Tell my brother to answer his phone," Mycroft's voice crackled in his ear. "I've been trying to reach him."

John swiped a hand over his eyes. "'m not your brother's keeper."

"Yes, you are. Have him ring me. Tell him that the Academy wishes to speak with him. And that Madame will be highly displeased if he declines." There was a click as the call ended.

John stared at the mobile for a moment, and then flopped back onto his pillow. Well, there was nothing for it. Mycroft was not above pestering John if pestering Sherlock brought no results. He hauled himself out of bed, stretched, scratched himself, and then stumped down the stairs to the main flat. The kettle sang its siren song, and John filled it and switched it on before he went any further, setting up a little reward for himself for getting out of bed to run Mycroft's errands for him. He headed down the short hall and knocked on Sherlock's door. "Sherlock, wake up."

There was a pause, and then John heard an indeterminate grunt from the other side of the door.

"Sherlock, I know Mycroft's been trying to ring you. He's started in on me now. He said that some place called the Academy wants to talk to you, and that Madame will be displeased. Please tell me you haven't gone and insulted your grandmother or something."

John heard a swish and a thump, and then the door opened, and Sherlock's sleepy face, crowned with wildly tousled hair, appeared before him. "You said the Academy?"

"Yup. 'S what Mycroft told me. You ring him. Or ring them. I'm going to go make tea." John shuffled back into the kitchen, where the kettle chugged invitingly away.

* * *

John was halfway through his tea when Sherlock reappeared. "Morning," he said. "Want some tea?"

Sherlock shook his head. His expression was thoughtful, and he pulled his dressing gown tightly around his body. "I need to get dressed," he said, though he made no move to do so. "We need to go out soon."

"Mmm. Do we?"

Sherlock nodded. "I've just spoken with the Academy. They want to see me as soon as possible. And . . . I'd like to bring my doctor along."

The request was not delivered in Sherlock's usual imperious voice of command, and John glanced up. Sherlock looked unusually puzzled, but John could not tell if it was from simple lack of sleep or some deeper cause. "All right," he said. "Go get yourself cleaned up. I'll finish my tea and take the next shower. Can it wait that long?"

Sherlock nodded, and went off to shower.

* * *

The oddity of the day only increased when Sherlock elected to travel by Tube rather than by cab. John held his tongue until they changed at King's Cross. "This is a bit much, just to get to Russell Square," he said.

"You're the one who always complains about taxi fare," Sherlock said. "And . . . I rather like the Russell Square station."

Ah. Well, John was certainly not about to argue with that. He turned his face to hide his smile, and followed Sherlock onto the Piccadilly Line.

They disembarked, and Sherlock led them from the station to Russell Square itself. Their destination was an institution near the University of London. The institution appeared to take up three of the terraced houses that faced the Square, for the words "Children's Academy of Dancing and Stage Training" could be seen in faded gold paint spanning three doors. Near the first door was a newer brass plaque that read, "Fidolia Academy of the Performing Arts," above an engraved pair of ballet shoes with intertwining ribbons.

"We're investigating a ballet school?" John asked. "What, have we got a serial killer who goes after ballerinas?"

"I hope not."

Sherlock hesitated a moment, and then opened the door. The interior of the school had a peculiar odour, of wood and sweat, and something sweet and slightly spicy as well. Sherlock appeared to know exactly where he was going, and John followed him into a waiting room whose walls were filled with photographs of children in costumes. Some of them were signed. Most were relatively new, from the 1960s or later, but off in a corner, John spotted a few much older photographs that he thought might be from the 1920s and 1930s.

He was particularly struck by a faded photograph of a little blonde girl dressed as Alice in Wonderland, wearing black ballet shoes. The photograph was brown and crumbly at the edges, but the inscription could still be read. "With much love to dear Madame. Pauline." John recalled that Mycroft had mentioned a "Madame," but surely this could not be the same person, not if that photograph was as old as it looked.

Sherlock was speaking quietly to the young woman at the receptionist's desk. She smiled and nodded at him, and then rose from her chair and left the waiting room. Sherlock came to look over John's shoulders. "Former pupils of the Academy," he said.

"So I gathered."

John moved along to some of the newer photographs. Some were portraits, but some showed groups, and he found that he could guess at the way the school had developed from the types of groups that appeared on the walls. By the late 1970s, some of the groups appeared to be ballroom dance classes, to judge by the stiff posture of the children and the ugly "best" clothes that John remembered from his own childhood. There were also a few photographs of boys and girls in a gymnasium. As he looked through the photographs from the 1980s, he thought he saw something familiar in one small, unsmiling face. But just as he leaned in more closely to investigate, the door to the waiting room opened.

The woman who entered was about his own age, small and slender, her hair pulled into a bun on top of her head. She wore a plain black leotard with warm-up trousers pulled over it, and soft lace-up shoes on her feet.

Sherlock startled a bit when he saw her, and he inclined his head almost shyly, but the woman laughed. "Oh, there's no need for that."

"It's not done any more?" Sherlock asked.

"It is, but, well, you were never one of mine. It seems a bit silly, especially with what I've asked of you."

Sherlock gave an awkward half-smile instead. John took another glance at a photograph of a ballroom class from the early 1980s and sucked in a breath. He turned to Sherlock. "You were a student here?"

"A few classes. Mummy thought this school was better for me than the one where Mycroft had his dancing lessons." Sherlock focussed his attention on the woman. "You're the current administrator, I assume?"

"Yes. Dorothy Robinson." She advanced and held out a hand to Sherlock. "And you must be Sherlock Holmes. We still have a photo of you in our files, but you've changed since then." She turned her attention to John and raised a delicate eyebrow at him.

John put on his "meeting a new patient" smile and shook her hand. "Doctor John Watson."

Ms. Robinson's smile faltered just a little. "Oh, dear. I hope we won't need a doctor."

"We'll see about that," Sherlock said. "What's happened? All I was told was that it has to do with – with Madame."

Ms. Robinson nodded. "Come with me. We'll talk in my office."

She led them down a corridor lined with doors. One or two were open, and John could see dance studios lined with mirrors. The walls held corkboards and fire extinguishers, and one wall bore a small, empty glass case. Sherlock glanced at the case in passing, but said nothing. Ms. Robinson showed them into a room with the shiny wooden floor of a dance studio. One half of the room was lined with mirrors and a barre, and the other half had a desk and filing cabinets. Ms. Robinson sat at the desk and gestured to Sherlock and John that they should sit in the two visitors' chairs.

She took a deep breath and pressed her fingers against her eyes for a moment. "Madame," she said, "is gone."

Sherlock sucked in a breath. "Dead?" he asked. "No, of course not. You wouldn't have called me if she were. What do you mean, gone?"

"Wait," John broke in. "Before we go any further. Who is this Madame?"

"Madame," Ms. Robinson said. "Posina Fidolia. The owner of the school – well, the current owner. Inherited it from the previous Madame Fidolia."

"Her mother?"

"Her teacher." Ms. Robinson smiled. "Posina Fidolia is the greatest ballerina England has ever produced, and she trained here as a child. The first Madame Fidolia had no children, so her prize student took over the school in 1974. She renamed it the Fidolia Academy in honour of her teacher."

John nodded. "And, now what? Does she teach?"

"She used to," Ms. Robinson said. "She taught me. But she mostly retired from teaching years ago. She's very spry for eighty-eight, but she's been on oxygen recently, and she's just not able to teach full classes any more. Sometimes she does individual tutoring, with a pupil she finds promising, but even that . . . well, her hearing's started to go, and it's hard to teach dancing if you can't hear the music."

Sherlock frowned. "She's going deaf?"

Ms. Robinson nodded. "I tried her mobile this morning, and she didn't respond. At first, I thought she just hadn't heard it, so I went to check on her."

"Where?"

"She has a set of rooms in the upper floors," Ms. Robinson said. A faint, nostalgic smile flitted across her face. "Even after she turned the day-to-day of the school over to me, she wouldn't go anywhere else. 'Why should I stay anywhere else, Dorothy?' she said to me. 'Everything I love best in life is here.' We had an old studio on the top floor converted into a little flat for her."

Sherlock nodded. "And this morning?"

"I didn't hear her when I came in. She likes to do her exercises in the morning, but she's so deaf now that she turns the volume of her music up as high as it can go. Usually, it echoes through the whole building, but I didn't hear it this morning. I got worried, and I went up to check on her."

"What did you find?"

Ms. Robinson trembled, and John fished in his pocket for a packet of tissues and handed one to her. She smiled at him and blew her nose before she spoke again. "The door was locked, and I had to break in. And she was just . . . gone. Nowhere to be seen. The bed was perfectly made. It was almost as though she'd stepped out for a moment. But . . . she's an old lady, and her life was here. Where would she have gone overnight?"

John waited for Sherlock to start deducing the solution to the problem, but Sherlock was oddly quiet. Treasuring a rare moment to ask a question, John leaned forward. "Ms. Robinson. I'm sorry to have to ask this, but had you noticed anything . . . well, odd about Madame recently? Had she been behaving strangely?"

"What do you mean, strangely? She's never been an ordinary person."

"Geniuses rarely are," Sherlock murmured.

John glanced at Sherlock, but Sherlock pretended that he hadn't spoken. "Has she been forgetful?" John asked "Or confused? Have you noticed any changes in her personality or in the way she interacted with people?"

Ms. Robinson opened her mouth, but Sherlock interrupted. "Or, alternatively. Has she seemed fearful? Cautious? Might someone have been watching her?"

Ms. Robinson glanced from John to Sherlock and back again. "No. She seemed very much like herself. Only . . . well, more so."

"How do you mean?" John asked.

"Well, the students she was tutoring. One of them came to me and said that Madame had spent their entire lesson telling her stories; she didn't say what sort. And Madame has been visiting the senior ballet classes more frequently. She doesn't take them over, and she always seems to know where she is, if that's what you're worried about. She just . . . visits. Watches the students. If you ask her, she'll correct them, but mostly, she just watches."

John sat back in his chair. Never having met Madame, he couldn't be sure, but she didn't sound like a case of dementia. And, to be honest, he had no idea how much of her behaviour was her own personality and how much might be something new and frightening.

Sherlock had begun to fidget, drumming his fingers on his thighs and tapping his toes. Finally, he sprang to his feet, wearing the very particular scowl that he wore only when he was nervous and trying to hide it. "The exhibit case," he said.

Ms. Robinson blinked at him. "Sorry?"

"The exhibit case, out in the corridor. It used to contain a pair of antique ballet shoes. Where are they?"

"Oh." Ms. Robinson rose and sorted through some files. "They were removed for cleaning. That was . . . a week ago, perhaps?" She consulted a piece of paper. "We sent them to a costume restoration house in Covent Garden. Why? Is that important?"

Sherlock's expression was shuttered. "It might be. Everything is important in some way. Yes, the shoes are important. How can the world be so full of idiots?"

John put a hand on Sherlock's arm, and Sherlock took a deep breath. "Show me her flat. Show me where Madame lived."


	2. 1981

**2. 1981**

* * *

"Sherlock," Mrs. Barnet said. "Come and sit down next to your mum, there's a good boy."

Sherlock turned around, halfway through the act of climbing up on the bench on the other side of the waiting room. It seemed as though they had been waiting forever, and it was boring sitting next to Mummy as she read her magazine. There were pictures of other children in fancy clothes on the wall, and Sherlock was much more interested in those.

"Let him be," Mummy said absently. "This is a stage school, after all. I suppose they expect energetic children here."

"Hm," Mrs. Barnet said. "Very different from that place in Knightsbridge where Mycroft went. And it isn't even close to their schools."

Mummy sighed, and put the magazine in her lap. "I know. It is awfully far away, but it's the best dancing school I could find that also had a gym. And you know how Sherlock gets when there are too many new places. I thought, with the one school, we might avoid at least a few screaming fits."

Sherlock turned his attention back to the pictures on the wall. Most of them were of little girls in fluffy ballet dresses, which were boring. But some of the children were dressed as animals. Sherlock didn't care much about the prospect of dancing class, but he thought he might like to be a cat or a bird. He wiggled a little further down the bench to see what other interesting costumes he could find.

He passed over a portrait of a child dressed up as Peter Pan, and three portraits of Alice in Wonderland. And then he saw the most wonderful photograph of all. It was of a little boy, about the same age as Mycroft, and that little boy was dressed as a pirate! He had a big white shirt with an open waistcoat, and wore a three-cornered hat. He stood next to an open treasure chest. Someone had written something on the photograph, in the rumply adult writing that Sherlock could not read yet, but there were words printed at the bottom. Entranced, Sherlock began to sound them out.

"Hen-ry . . . um . . . As-ton. Tree . . . tray . . . tree-a-soor?"

"_Treasure Island_. Do you know it?"

Sherlock jumped, and turned around. He found himself face to face with an extraordinary woman. She was short and slender. She was older than Mummy, but she dressed in clothes that looked like what a little girl would wear, in what looked like a tight black swimsuit with a thin white skirt wrapped around her waist. She had white tights and wore pink ballet shoes on her feet. Her hair was startlingly ginger, and it was pulled into a tight bun on top of her head. She smiled at Sherlock. Standing on the bench, he could look her in the eye, and he decided that he liked that.

"My brother reads me _Treasure Island_," he offered. "It's a chapter book."

"What a fine brother he is," the woman said, and Sherlock liked her immediately. "What is your name?"

"Sherlock Holmes."

"And how old are you?"

Sherlock held up five fingers.

The woman nodded gravely. "I am Madame Posina Fidolia," she said, "but that is much too long to use every day. My pupils call me Madame."

"Madame," Sherlock repeated.

"Very good." Madame smiled. "Well, what do you think of the pictures? Which one is your favourite?"

"This one." Sherlock pointed to the picture of the boy dressed as a pirate. "I want to be a pirate!"

Madame peered at the photograph. "A very good thing for a little boy to want to be. That is Henry Aston, who was once a pupil at this school. He played Jim in _Treasure Island_ at the Mermaid Theatre in 1972."

Sherlock looked again at the picture, in awe of any little boy who was so lucky as to actually be part of a pirate story. "Could I be a pirate?" he asked.

"Perhaps." Madame offered him her hands. "Come down onto the floor, and let's see what kind of gentleman you are."

Sherlock jumped down from the bench all by himself. He had not needed to hold someone's hands since Christmas. Madame looked suitably impressed. "Very clever," she said. "Now, we'll begin from the beginning, with manners."

Sherlock's smile faded. Mummy and Mrs. Barnet were always telling him about manners, all the rules he had to remember at the table that made eating into a chore, all the interesting things that he was not allowed to touch, and how he had to be nice to adults who wanted to pinch and poke him and slobber kisses over his face. Manners were horrible things.

Madame looked at Sherlock's expression and laughed. "Look at your face, like a thundercloud," she said. "Don't worry. This will be very easy. We start with greeting. I am the headmistress of this school. All my pupils, whenever we meet, greet me in a very proper and respectful way. You will put one hand on your heart, and bow, and say to me, 'Madame.' Like so."

Madame demonstrated, giving a graceful bow. She rose and looked at Sherlock. "Can you do that?"

Sherlock was not about to do something so silly, so un-pirate-like. He crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. "Why?"

"Sherlock!" Mummy cried, rising from her seat. "Do what the teacher tells you to do!"

But Madame laughed, and held up her hand to Mummy. "Why? It's a very good question. It shows good form to greet someone politely."

"I don't have to have good form," Sherlock said. "I'm going to be a pirate, and pirates can do whatever they want. Pirates don't have to have manners."

"Who told you that?" Madame asked. "Pirates have excellent form – at least, the best ones do. Why, the most famous pirate of all – have you heard of Captain James Hook?"

Sherlock nodded. "He's in _Peter Pan_. My brother read that to me."

"Do you remember what made him famous?" Madame said. "It was his attention to good form." She raised her arms, looked off into the distance, and seemed to become a different person. In a voice deeper than the one she had used with him before, she recited, and her feet did a little dance that echoed the rhythm of her words:

"In manner, something of the grand seigneur still clung to him, so that he even ripped you up with an air, and I have been told that he was a _raconteur_ of repute. He was never more sinister than when he was most polite, which is probably the truest test of breeding; and the elegance of his diction, even when he was swearing, no less than the distinction of his demeanour, showed him one of a different cast from his crew."

Madame stopped reciting, and Sherlock stared at her, impressed. He didn't know most of the words that she had used, but somehow, she had made him think of a pirate, daring and brave, but also exceptionally polite and able to charm even the strictest Mummy into letting him run away to sea and have adventures. This could only be a Pirate Captain, and that was exactly what Sherlock wanted to be. He put his hand on his heart and dipped a little bow. "Madame," he said.

Madame smiled at him. Mummy and Mrs. Barnet glanced at each other. "Why, Sherlock, that was lovely," Mummy said.

"Very nicely done," Mrs. Barnet added.

Mummy held out her hand to Madame. "I'm Mrs. Holmes. It's a pleasure to meet you, Madame Fidolia. Would you possibly be able to take Sherlock? I don't think I've ever seen anyone get on so well with him."

"We shall see," Madame said.

* * *

Sherlock held Mrs. Barnet's hand as they followed Madame and Mummy into the school proper. It was a very noisy place. From nearly every room came the sound of music, the rhythmic thump of feet, or some other commotion. A group of girls wearing tap shoes hurried past, and the clatter hurt Sherlock's ears. At last they stopped at one room where boys and girls in their party clothes stood in pairs, learning to waltz. The piano player stopped as soon as Madame entered, and all the boys bowed, and all the girls curtsied. "Madame," they said.

"Very good," Madame replied. "Sherlock, come here."

Sherlock hated all of the other children watching him, and he turned and hid his face in Mrs. Barnet's skirt. Mummy sighed, took him by the shoulders, and turned him around. "Off you go," she said.

His eyes firmly fixed on his shoes, Sherlock went to stand next to Madame in the centre of the room. Madame put her finger under his chin and lifted his head so that he looked directly at her face. Her expression said as clearly as if she had spoken the words that she expected him to obey her, but her eyes were kind.

"Stand up straight," she said. "Just like that. I want to see how you move. Do as I do. Mr. Norton, the baby polka, if you please."

The piano struck up a lively tune. Madame began to dance with a simple step. Sherlock did his best to imitate her, watching her feet until he found the rhythm and then watching her face so that he did not have to look at the other children. After he had found the beat of the music, Madame stopped dancing and withdrew to the side of the room, but motioned with her hand that Sherlock should continue.

The tune ended, and Sherlock's feet stuttered to a halt. Madame made him bend over and touch his toes, stretch towards the ceiling, stand first on one foot and then on the other, and then skip in a circle around the room. Finally, she came to him and lifted first one of his legs and then the other over his head. Then she sat down again and nodded to him.

Sherlock puzzled for a moment, but then realised what she meant for him to do. He bowed, as she had showed him, and said, "Madame."

Mummy gave a grateful little squeak, and Madame's spell was broken. Sherlock ran back to hide his face in Mrs. Barnet's skirt once more.

* * *

Their next stop was the gymnasium, where boys swung on pommel horses and flipped over bars, and girls danced on balance beams and tumbled. This time, Madame did not lead Sherlock through anything, but simply turned him over to the instructor, Mr. Stewart. Mr. Stewart instructed the boys and girls to keep working, and Sherlock was glad when they returned to whatever they had been doing rather than watch him.

Mr. Stewart led Sherlock to a mat in a corner of the gym and instructed him to do a forward roll, which Sherlock was very good at doing, and then a cartwheel. That was trickier, as Sherlock had not quite figured out how to do the bit where his legs went over his head, but he kicked out as best he could, and he did end up on his feet at the end. Then Mr. Stewart made him climb up and down a ladder built into the gymnasium wall, and dangle by his hands from a high bar.

The gym was much more interesting than the dancing class, and when Mr. Stewart went over to talk with Mummy, Sherlock wriggled free of Mrs. Barnet's hand and hurried to bounce on a trampoline that he had spotted. In his mind, the trampoline became the deck of a pirate ship, tossing on the ocean. "Arr!" Sherlock cried. "Avast, me hearties! Find the treasure!"

Mrs. Barnet let out a horrified gasp, but Madame laughed and applauded. "Wonderful, my little pirate," she said. "Would you like to see the acting class next?"

Sherlock bounced off of the trampoline and rushed over to hear. "Oh, yes, please!" he cried, but Mummy shook her head.

"I'm terribly sorry, but I'm afraid we do have a timetable," she said. "Mr. Holmes will be expecting his supper, and we do have to pick up my elder child from his piano lesson."

"Of course," Madame said. "Come with me to my office. This way, please."

In the office, Madame gave Sherlock a sweet from a tin and permission to run around and climb on the ballet barre while she spoke with Mummy. Their discussion was brief and to the point. No matter how much Sherlock pleaded that he wanted to do the acting class instead of the dancing class, Mummy remained firm, stating that Sherlock must concentrate on the things that really mattered in life. She enrolled Sherlock for ballroom dancing on Tuesdays after school and then for gym on Wednesdays and Fridays.

"And you have your violin lessons on Mondays, swimming lessons on Saturday mornings, and we'll just have to think of something to do with you on Thursdays," she said. "Perhaps we can arrange for Mycroft to pick you up at school, and you can sit quietly and read a book while he has his chess lesson."

"Can it be a book about pirates?" Sherlock asked.

"I suppose. Don't pout, darling, or your face will freeze that way."

* * *

In the end, they developed a routine. Three days a week, Mrs. Barnet picked Sherlock up from school, and they took the Tube to Russell Square and walked from there to the Academy, because Mummy needed the car to take Mycroft to his after-school lessons. Sherlock adored gym days, when he could bounce and roll and jump up and down and climb things, and no one told him to stop trampling all over the nice furniture. He was less fond of his dancing class, because he had to change from his itchy school uniform into his even itchier best clothes, and none of the girls in the class seemed to be especially pleased to dance with him.

But the dancing class did have one unexpected benefit. Not very often, but occasionally, Madame would visit the class. All the pupils would say "Madame," with a respectful bow or curtsey, and then Madame would ask them to dance for her as she wove among them and gave encouraging little comments and corrections. Sherlock always thrilled at the praise, and once, after Madame had asked him and Judy Gilman to dance a foxtrot for her, just the two of them, she smiled and said, "Well done, Judy! Well done, my little pirate!"

Sherlock was so pleased that Madame had remembered that he was a pirate that he pretended to be Captain James Hook for the rest of the class. He thought of all the sinister things he could imagine, and made sure to be on his most polite behaviour, so that everyone could see that something of the manner of the grand seigneur clung to him.

During the break in the dancing class, Sherlock would run down the hall, past a glass case that held a pair of old ballet shoes, and peek through the window of the door to the next classroom. There was the junior acting class, the children who were training to become real paid actors and actresses, and Sherlock would steal a few precious minutes to watch as the students became other people and told stories with their bodies.


	3. Rapid As The Whirling Spheres

**3. Rapid As The Whirling Spheres**

* * *

Madame's flat was on the very top floor. There was no lift, and John tried to imagine an old woman, her knees and hips worn down from years of dancing, trudging up the stairs every evening, bumping her oxygen tank behind her.

"You had no other accommodations for her?" he asked Ms. Robinson.

"For years, she wouldn't hear of it," Ms. Robinson said with a shrug. "When she had to go on the oxygen tank, I phoned around to see about getting a lift installed. We had a contractor in a few weeks ago. He said that the building was sound, and we could put in a lift if we chopped off the end of Studio Five. Madame was horrified, of course, but . . . I've already started plans for a fundraising production. I was thinking about _A Midsummer Night's Dream_. I thought Madame would like that."

They had reached the flat, which stood still and silent, its door ajar. Sherlock paused to study the door before taking a deep breath and gently pushing it open. He did not stride into the flat with his customary command of space, but entered hesitantly, as if aware that he was intruding upon a space into which he had not been invited. John and Ms. Robinson followed him.

The flat was small and simply furnished, little more than a bedsit. The bed had a high wooden frame and was neatly made, covered with a white bedspread. A small refrigerator, a hot plate, and a tiny Formica table with two chairs were all crowded into one corner. Nearby were a wardrobe and a small vanity table, and a half-open door that led to a tiny lavatory. Half of the flat was bare of furniture except for a free-standing barre. The flat was as clean and tidy as if it were about to be photographed by a furniture magazine, and the surfaces of the furniture gleamed. The walls were covered with an exuberant collage of photographs and newspaper clippings. John supposed there must be decades' worth of them, pictures of ballet dancers and theatrical performances, articles from old movie magazines, and, oddly enough, one or two photographs of aeroplanes.

Sherlock wandered around the room, inspecting everything with his sharp eyes, but kept his hands tightly clasped behind his back so as not to touch a thing. After a complete circuit, he stopped at the vanity table and delicately swiped a finger across the surface. He brought his hand to his nose and sniffed. "Furniture polish," he announced. "Someone took great care to clean this room, and recently."

"Madame did like to keep things in order," Ms. Robinson offered.

"Or –" John paused, not wanting to make the suggestion, but fearing that Sherlock would blurt it out more rudely if he didn't, "—a murderer might have cleaned so as to leave no traces behind."

Ms. Robinson flinched. "Why would anyone want to hurt Madame?" she cried. "She's an old woman, a retired ballerina. What would anyone possibly want with her?"

"That depends," Sherlock said. "Is there anything valuable that's missing?"

"Oh." Ms. Robinson frowned. "I don't know. I don't think Madame owned anything particularly valuable. Everything she had was invested in the Academy."

"What about something personal?" John asked, thinking of the keepsakes that littered Mrs. Hudson's flat. "Old coins, jewellery?"

Sherlock hesitated only a moment before opening a drawer in the vanity. He removed an old wooden jewellery box and set it on the table. John and Ms. Robinson drew closer. Sherlock opened the box, releasing a puff of scent. John peered into the box and saw rings, necklaces, and brooches, all jumbled together and intertwined around each other and a small tiara that sat in the bottom compartment. John knew very little about jewellery, and he could not tell whether any of it was valuable, or whether it was all costume jewellery.

Sherlock squinted at some of the pieces, and lifted out a necklace of sparkling white stones that supported a green stone pendant. "Diamonds and an emerald," he said. "A thief would have to be a fool to miss this." Gently, almost reverently, he set the necklace back in the box. "Is there an inventory of the jewellery?"

Ms. Robinson shook her head. "I don't know," she said. "I don't think so. But I know someone who might be able to help us." She took her mobile from the pocket of her warm-up trousers and turned away from John and Sherlock to make the call.

"Hello, Robert? It's Dorothy Robinson, from the Academy. Is Ms. Winter available? Yes, please. Tell her it's urgent." She was silent for a moment. "Hello, Rachel. No, I'm afraid something's happened. Yes. Yes. Well – we don't know. Would you please? Yes, right away. Yes, we'll be expecting you."

She ended the call and turned back to John and Sherlock. "I've just spoken with Rachel Winter, one of Madame's friends. They used to borrow jewellery from each other to go to premieres. I'm sure Rachel would notice if anything is missing. She's coming by taxi to have a look."

John gave a crisp nod. "Good. In the meantime, other theories? Robbery is still a possibility, but unlikely. Sherlock, can you find any signs of sexual assault?"

Sherlock grimaced, but glanced around the main room and peeked into the lavatory. "Nothing here," he said. He approached the bed, and John saw that his hand trembled as he reached to pull down the bedspread. The sheets beneath were fresh and white, as though they had just been taken from a linen cupboard. "What about old laundry?" Sherlock asked. "Where does Madame put it?"

"There's a chute at the end of the hall," Ms. Robinson said. "The Academy doesn't generate much, since the pupils take their own things home for laundering, but we do keep a few items on hand."

"I'll go check." Sherlock strode out of the flat, and John heard him clattering down the stairs.

"He's taking it hard," John said after a few moments. "Did he – was he one of Madame's private students?" He found it hard to imagine Sherlock in a ballet class, especially when he recalled the grim expression on Sherlock's face in the photo of the ballroom class.

Ms. Robinson shook her head. "Not that I recall," she said. "At least, not in any classes that I remember being in. Of course, I left to train at the Royal Ballet School when I was fourteen – I was awarded a scholarship, and we didn't have so much money that I could afford to pass up the opportunity - so he might have switched to ballet after that, but I don't recall that he was on the professional track."

"And Madame didn't teach the non-professional track?"

"Oh, no!" Ms. Robinson let out a watery little laugh. "Only ballet, only senior professional classes and very promising individuals. I don't think Sherlock would have been her pupil at all."

* * *

Sherlock returned a short time later, escorting a small, slender woman dressed in a suit, wearing a little hat on top of her grey curls. Ms. Robinson stood up and dropped a curtsey, a move that John thought looked odd on a woman wearing warm-up trousers. "Rachel," she said.

"Dorothy. I came as soon as I could. What's happened?"

Ms. Robinson drew Rachel Winter aside, and Sherlock took advantage of the opportunity to whisper to John. "Old sheets are in the laundry bin. Nothing unusual about them."

"Then perhaps –"

"Kidnapping." Sherlock's attention was focussed on the one thing that was out of place in the tidy little flat, a small envelope lying behind the door. "A ransom demand, perhaps? Brushed out of the way when Dorothy Robinson entered to check on Madame. She never saw it." He picked up the envelope and began to work it open.

Meanwhile, Rachel had begun to sift through Madame's jewellery box. "I don't know all her jewels, of course," she said to Ms. Robinson. "But there is one thing that really ought to be here."

"What's that?" John asked.

"She had a string of coral beads. It was her favourite necklace, always wore it at family parties and holidays. Very old, she'd had those beads as long as I'd known her, and that's a long time."

"Valuable?"

Rachel shook her head. "I shouldn't think so. Twenty, perhaps forty pounds if you consider their age."

"Sentimental, then." Sherlock's voice cut through the room, sharply enough that John knew that something was wrong. He turned around to see that Sherlock was standing behind them, the letter in his hands. His jaw was set, and John wondered if he was paler than usual or if it was just a trick of the lighting. "No thief would take a string of coral beads when there were diamonds and emeralds in the box. Only one person took those corals, and it was the only person to whom they were worth more than the other pieces. And that was Madame. There is no crime here."

John was sure that he was the only one who caught the minute wobble in Sherlock's voice. Sherlock held out the letter, and John took it. It consisted of a single line, scrawled in shaky handwriting.

_Gone home. Garnie and Sister Pauline are waiting._

"Sherlock –" John began.

"Madame is dead," Sherlock stated. "Or dying. Makes no difference, unless we can find her in time, which is highly unlikely. But we've got to find her."

Ms. Robinson stared at Sherlock. "You mean . . ." She choked, and could not finish her words.

Sherlock nodded. "She left, last night, after everyone else had gone home. She cleaned her home, took only this one last piece of jewellery for sentiment, and went away somewhere to die."

John frowned. "But where would she have gone?"

"Home. Obviously. She said as much, in her note. The better question is where that home is."

"This is her home," Ms. Robinson said. "She's lived here for years."

Sherlock shook her head. "Can't you read? Obviously she didn't mean this flat, or else she'd still be here. It must have been a childhood home. Somewhere she lived with – with this 'Garnie' and her sister. Show me your enrolment records. Maybe the address is listed."

"Can't." Ms. Robinson sighed. "Most of our early records were destroyed in a fire in 1965. The only records we've got are the ones from after the fire. Most of the photographs burned as well."

"But not all of them," John said. "There's that old one of the little girl downstairs, the one dressed as Alice in Wonderland."

Sherlock nodded. "Madame's sister, Pauline Fossil. Of course they would have saved that photo. We know what's written on the front. What's on the back?"

* * *

After only a bit of persuading, Ms. Robinson led them back to the waiting room and took Pauline's photo off of the wall. She pried the frame open and lifted the picture out, handling it gently, as though it might crumble away. Unfortunately, the only words on the back were a stamp from a photographer's studio. Sherlock looked the studio up on his mobile, but no one was really surprised to find that it was long gone.

John glanced at the photograph again, and a memory of Harry's old-films phase filtered into his mind. "Pauline Fossil? Isn't she one of those old-fashioned film stars? And she's Madame's sister?"

Sherlock nodded. "Madame used a stage name – oh, don't make that face. You don't think anyone was really named Posina Fidolia, do you?"

"I'm talking to a man named Sherlock Holmes, aren't I?" John allowed himself a small smile. "Couldn't we trace Madame through her sister?"

"Unlikely," Sherlock shot back, "since Pauline Fossil died in 2007. Have you forgotten Madame's note?"

"No," John said. "But I was just thinking . . . you know, fan clubs, websites? Surely someone must know where Pauline Fossil was born."

"Don't bother." Rachel Winter pulled herself to her feet. "You can trace her through her sister. You just have to ask the correct sister. Let me see here . . ." She rummaged through her handbag for a mobile, which she carried out into the entryway.

"There's a third sister?" Ms. Robinson asked the room at large.

Sherlock shrugged. "Obviously. You didn't know?"

"Only ever heard of the dancer and the film star. If there was another sister . . . well, all the records were destroyed."

"And you call yourself the headmistress of the Academy." Sherlock's voice dripped scorn.

Ms. Robinson's eyes flashed. "You didn't know, either."

"I'm not the headmistress of Madame's Academy," Sherlock said. "You are. What else don't you know? What about those antique ballet shoes? The ones you sent out for cleaning. When would they have been ready to be picked up?"

Ms. Robinson hurried out of the waiting room, and returned in a few moments bearing a file folder. "Er . . . yesterday. I was going to have them picked up today."

Sherlock snatched a piece of paper out of the file folder. John had a glimpse of it, and saw that it was a work order. Sherlock took his mobile from his pocket and punched in the telephone number listed on the work order. "Hello, yes," he said, in a bright voice entirely unlike his own. "I'm calling from the Fidolia Academy of the Performing Arts. I'd like to inquire about a work order? Yes. Number 18347-5. Yes. Oh, thanks ever so!"

He ended the call and raised an eyebrow at Ms. Robinson. "The shoes have been picked up already. Yesterday evening, by special arrangement, paid in full, in cash. I think we both know who picked them up, don't we?"

Ms. Robinson's eyes filled with tears. "But why?" she asked.

"Because I was right. The shoes are important. Don't you know anything?"

John laid a hand on his arm. "Sherlock."

He was saved from having to administer a scolding in front of a client by Rachel Winter, who walked into the waiting room with a grim smile on her face.

"I've just spoken with Patricia Bridger," she said. "Her mother is Petrova Fossil-Davies. Petrova lives in a care home, and Patricia says she can meet you there in a little over an hour. Here's the address." She handed Sherlock a slip of paper.

"Excellent," Sherlock said. "We have time to stop at the costume restoration shop on the way." He glanced at Ms. Robinson. "Care to come along?"

Ms. Robinson sighed. "I can't. There's too much to do here. I'll have to ring all the teachers. We have to decide what to tell the students before the first classes start this afternoon."

Sherlock turned on his heel, nodded to Rachel, and walked out the door. John lingered just a moment longer. "We'll keep in touch, let you know what we find," he assured Ms. Robinson. Then he hurried out onto the street after Sherlock.


	4. 1986

**4. 1986**

* * *

Sherlock pinched the webbing between his thumb and forefinger to keep himself from falling asleep. The Tube was full of people, and the warmth of their body heat combined with the gentle swaying of the train would be enough to lull any boy to sleep, even if he had not lain awake long after his bedtime listening to Mummy and Daddy shouting at each other. In fact, Sherlock had fallen asleep earlier in the day, in the middle of science class. Mr. Sinclair had been droning on and on about the planets and the solar system, and Sherlock had been so very bored, and his eyes had become heavy, and the next thing he knew, there was a tremendous crack as Mr. Sinclair slapped his ruler down on Sherlock's desk, and Sherlock had been packed off for a lecture from the headmaster.

He hoped that the headmaster wouldn't tell Mummy what had happened. Riding alone on the Tube from school to the Academy was a privilege, as Mummy never failed to remind Sherlock when he was being naughty. Even when there were days when Sherlock considered it a dubious privilege at best and wished that Daddy had not dismissed Mrs. Barnet when Sherlock had entered prep school, he certainly did not want Mummy to pick him up from school to take him to his dancing class. Or his gym class, really, but being driven by one's Mummy to one's dancing class was the height of embarrassment, according to the other boys in Sherlock's year.

The train pulled into the Russell Square station, and Sherlock got out and walked the short distance to the Academy. In the changing room, he dutifully changed out of his school uniform and put on his good clothes, glancing enviously at the boys who were changing into the plain black T-shirts and trousers that the acting classes wore. At ten years old, Sherlock had long since come to accept that he would most likely not grow up to be a pirate, and was considering becoming a spy instead. But, deep down inside, he was disappointed that Mummy had never allowed him to join the acting class so that he could at least have pretended to be a pirate.

With a sigh, Sherlock tied the laces on his good shoes and trudged down the corridor. He crowded up against a wall to let a group of girls in tap dance uniforms clatter past, and then slipped into the ballroom dance studio.

* * *

Miss Dupree breezed into the studio and clapped her hands, and the ten girls and eight boys scrambled into a line to greet her with a polite curtsey or bow. "Good afternoon," Miss Dupree said.

"Good afternoon, Miss Dupree," the children chorused.

Miss Dupree nodded to the pianist. "May we have a bit of that rumba, please, Mr. Norton?" she asked. Turning to the children, she added, "Now, listen to the music, and think about the kind of movement that it might be telling you to do."

Mr. Norton played a few bars, and the children listened, more or less attentively.

"Now, then," Miss Dupree said. "What did you hear? How about . . . Sherlock Holmes?"

Sherlock wrinkled his nose. "It's the same rumba that Mr. Norton plays every time," he said. "He tries to make it sound like a guitar, but it isn't, really."

Several of the girls tittered, but Miss Dupree glared. "Sherlock, that's a warning. I will not have anyone being rude in this class. Daniel Barker, what do you think?"

Sherlock did not listen to what Daniel had to say, but scowled at his feet. In the end, it turned out that Miss Dupree meant to teach the class how to do side breaks and finish with a twirl, and Sherlock dragged himself out to the middle of the floor with the other pupils to pair off for practice.

There was the usual shuffling as the children selected partners based on the complicated and ever-shifting friendships of the week. Normally, Sherlock paid little attention to the trading, because none of the other children in the dancing class went to his school, and he didn't know enough about how things worked at their schools. But today, he found that all of the other boys had found partners, while he faced down the three remaining girls, who were having a ferocious argument, all in whispers. It looked as though he would have to ask one of them to dance.

He approached the little group and tapped Judy Gilman on the shoulder. "Dance with me?" he mumbled.

Judy leaped back as if she had been stung by a bee, and cast accusing glances at Charlotte Goddard and Poppy Richardson. Poppy backed away, shoving Charlotte in front of her to face Sherlock. "You said!" Charlotte hissed at them. "You said you'd dance with him this week, Poppy! I danced with him last week, _and_ I let you wear my Rockin' Rose nail polish. It's no fair."

Poppy shrugged. "But you get to dance with a boy, Charlotte," she said. "I'll have to dance with Judy, and I'll have to be the boy because I'm taller." Neither she nor Judy looked especially distressed at this thought. Charlotte wrinkled her nose, but turned back to Sherlock anyway.

Sherlock took Charlotte's hand and tried not to look her in the eye. He knew perfectly well how little the other children in the dancing class thought of him, and he didn't mind, because he only had to see them once a week. But he found that he did not like having to listen as Charlotte and Judy and Poppy fought for the privilege of not dancing with him. And a small part of him was disappointed that Charlotte had lost the fight, because Charlotte could not keep her feet straight and always stepped on people.

Miss Dupree had not noticed the argument, and, seeing that the children were arranged into couples, nodded to Mr. Norton. Mr. Norton began to play, and Miss Dupree demonstrated the steps she wanted to teach. Then the children had a chance to try those steps for themselves. Sherlock picked up the idea of the side break quickly, but Charlotte could not seem to make sense of the hand change, and pinched Sherlock's fingers when he tried to let go of her hand. Then she twirled at an awkward angle and stepped on Sherlock's foot. Mr. Norton played the rumba over and over, the tune grinding itself into Sherlock's ears even as Charlotte's elbows ground into Sherlock's ribs.

Eventually, exhausted and fed up with the stupid rumba, Sherlock let his attention wander. Unfortunately, Charlotte chose that moment to make an especially enthusiastic twirl, and she lost her balance and tumbled down onto her bottom. All the other children stopped dancing and stared at them. "You hit me!" Charlotte snapped. "You're meant to pick your arm up when I twirl, not smash it into my face!"

She sounded exactly like Mummy had sounded last night, fighting with Daddy, and Sherlock responded without thinking. "You have to let me twirl you, you stupid cunt!"

Charlotte's face went white, and her mouth formed into a perfectly round O. Before she could scream again, Miss Dupree strode over to them and seized Sherlock's arm.

"Sherlock Holmes, that is enough out of your mouth!" she said. "None of my pupils use language like that when they are dancing."

"But she had it all wrong," Sherlock protested. "She –"

"It doesn't matter what Charlotte did. You were the one to call her an extremely rude name, and I will not have that from any boy in my class. Sherlock Holmes, you are dismissed from this class for the rest of the day. Go and wait outside in the hall until your mother comes to fetch you."

Sherlock tried not to feel all the eyes staring at him as he slouched out of the dance studio and into the hall. The studio door shut behind him, and he was left alone in the hall, with the jangle of music, singing, and the faint rattle of tap-dancing drifting out from behind other doors. There was nothing to do. In the acting class next door, they were doing the Father Christmas scene from _The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe_, and Sherlock wanted so much to be a Talking Animal in Narnia that his insides hurt with jealousy. He almost wished that he were back in the hated dancing class, because at least being stepped on by Charlotte Goddard was more interesting than sitting in the hall listening to other children receiving interesting Christmas presents and fighting evil.

He turned his head away from the acting class and found himself looking at a little glass case on the wall. It had always been there, but he had never really taken the time to look at it, not when there was the acting class to watch. But today, Sherlock found himself intrigued by the little pair of ballet shoes in the case. They were very old, and had faded to a sort of gold colour, but here and there, Sherlock could see traces of their original pink along the seams. There was a card at the bottom of the case, with a name written in a thin, flowing, old-fashioned hand. _Posy Fossil_, Sherlock read. If he craned his neck, he could just see the back of the card, where the same hand had written, _Her mother's shoes, given to Madame, June 1934._ He wondered who Posy Fossil was, and why she had given away her mother's ballet shoes.

* * *

The next day, Sherlock was feeling much happier. Mummy and Daddy had started speaking to each other again, and today was a day for gym class instead of dancing class at the Academy. Sherlock bounded into the changing room, eager to free himself from the confines of his school uniform. He had just changed into the shorts and vest that were the uniform of the gym class when Mr. Spencer the singing master entered the changing room. He had a list in his hand, which he consulted before he spoke.

"Boys, I have some announcements," he said. "First of all, the advanced jazz dance class is cancelled for today, all those students should join Miss Collins's intermediate group in Studio Nine. David Speake, Oliver Wiley, and George Halcox, report to Miss Gowers, bring your tap uniforms and shoes, you're to be taken to the BBC for an audition. Sherlock Holmes, report to Madame Fidolia in her office at once."

All of the other boys turned to stare at Sherlock. Sherlock felt as though a hole had opened up in the bottom of his stomach, so he said nothing, but he stuck his tongue out at them before he stuffed his feet into his trainers and fled the changing room.

* * *

His bravado deserted him completely when he arrived at Madame's office, and he almost ran away. But then the door opened, and out came Angela Thorton, a senior girl who was one of Madame's special students. Sherlock tried to make himself invisible, but Madame spotted him and waved for him to come in. He took a deep breath, and slipped into the room. Madame was standing near her desk, looking not at all surprised to see him. At least he knew what to do next. Sherlock put his hand on his heart and bowed, and said, "Madame."

Madame indicated the armchair next to her desk. "Sit down here, Sherlock," she said. She sat down in her own chair and regarded him curiously.

"Miss Dupree came to speak to me yesterday," she said, and Sherlock wanted very much to scrooge down small in the armchair, but he sat up straight, because Madame disliked slouching. "She said that you were rude to her and to Mr. Norton, and to another student in your dancing class. I wonder what you might have to say to that."

Sherlock bowed his head, and twisted his arms and legs together. "Miss Dupree is –" he began, and then he thought better of it. "Charlotte was nasty to me first," he mumbled. "And that class is boring anyway."

To his great surprise, Madame did not scold him for that impertinence. Instead, she nodded thoughtfully, just the way grownups did when they were having grownup conversations. "I suspected as much."

"You did?" Sherlock choked out. Grownups never seemed to notice when children were bored. Or if they did notice, they didn't care.

"I did," Madame said. "You see, there's something I've suspected for rather a long time about you, young pirate."

Sherlock could not stop his mouth twitching, for Madame had not called him a pirate in a very long time.

"I think you have a special sort of a brain," Madame went on. "You see things very differently to the other children."

"I can't help it," Sherlock said.

"I know that." Madame chuckled a little. "You can't stop yourself seeing things differently any more than Nureyev could stop himself from dancing. A special brain brings that gift to you as easily as birds take flight. But the gift comes with a price. This world of ours isn't built to deal with special brains, and it strikes hard against them."

Sherlock wrinkled his nose. "I didn't know that people at a dancing school could have special brains," he said. "I thought everybody only cared about the feet."

Madame startled him by bursting into a full-throated laugh. "Oh, my little pirate," she said. "I will tell you a story. Once, there was a little girl, who was a pupil at this very Academy."

"Was she one of your special students, like Angela?" Sherlock asked.

"Oh, no," Madame said. "This was many years ago, long before I became the headmistress. This little girl, from the very beginning, danced as though she were born to it, as though she had come into the world wearing ballet shoes. She did become the special pupil of the headmistress, and they worked together, here in this very room, where none of the others ever saw."

Sherlock glanced around Madame's office and tried to imagine the little girl with her teacher, gliding and leaping and fluttering on her pointes.

"The little girl was the best dancer the Academy had ever produced," Madame went on. "But there was a price to be paid for her skill. She couldn't dance with any of the other girls. Even the senior ballet class was too easy for her, and she became bored."

Something flashed in Sherlock's mind. He recalled being bored in his dancing class, and then he recalled the glass case containing the pair of ancient ballet shoes. "Was her name – the little girl's name – was it Posy Fossil?" he asked.

Madame smiled at him, the same smile she used when he danced the foxtrot beautifully or flipped over the vaulting horse and landed on his feet. "Yes. The little girl was called Posy Fossil. And how did you know that?"

"Those ballet shoes in the case. They have her name on them. She had to have been somebody special for her shoes to be hung up in a glass case."

"Posy was somebody special," Madame said. "And she had a special brain, the same way that you have a special brain, and it made her be very naughty in her dancing class, just as you were."

Sherlock hung his head and thrust his chin forward so that he would not cry. Madame put her hand under his chin and raised his head so that she could look him in the eye.

"Don't think that Posy's story ends there. She was only a little girl at the time, and something had to be done with her. In the end, they made a compromise. Do you know what that is?"

Sherlock thought for a moment. "It's when you solve a problem so that no one is happy."

"That's one way to look at it," Madame said. "Another way is to say that a compromise is when you are offered a chance at something you want, but you must give something in return. It's what most people with special brains do to get along in the world. In your case, Miss Dupree and I have discussed you, and I am prepared to offer you a compromise."

Sherlock sat up, immediately interested.

Madame regarded him with a look that was thoughtful and a bit sly. "You are a good dancer, but your heart isn't in it. I've seen faces like yours before in dancing classes. My sister was the same way. What would you rather be doing while you're dancing?"

"I want to do the acting class," Sherlock said without hesitation. "It looks much more fun, and I never did get to be a pirate."

"I thought as much," Madame said. "I've told your mother . . . well, what your mother and I talk about isn't any of your business. You know that that class is part of the professional track, of course, and that you would have to work very hard to keep up, and you wouldn't be allowed any of the principal parts."

"I don't care."

Madame nodded. "Well, then. I shall speak very seriously with your mother, and, on her approval, you may switch to the acting class. However," and Madame held up her hand to stop Sherlock from jumping out of the chair with delight, "it is a compromise, and you must give something before you are allowed to switch."

"What's that?" Sherlock asked.

"You know that I take manners and attitude seriously." Madame's face was stern now. "Miss Dupree was right, you know. You were very rude to her and Mr. Norton, and again to your classmate, even after you had been warned. I will not have rudeness in the Academy. If you truly wish to switch to the acting class, you must apologise to everyone you insulted. You will write three letters of apology, one for Miss Dupree, one for Mr. Norton, and one for Miss Goddard. I will read the letters after you have written them, and if I decide that they are sincere, you will hand the letters to their recipients. Only then will you be permitted to switch to the acting class. Well? Is that a compromise that you are willing to accept?"

Sherlock swallowed. Writing the letters would be difficult, and he could not imagine how he could ever hand such a letter to Charlotte Goddard without bursting into flames from the sheer embarrassment. But then he recalled the joy and wonder on the face of the girl who had played Lucy Pevensie as she received her gift from Father Christmas. "Yes," he choked out. "I'll do it."

Madame sat back and smiled. "Excellent. I shall expect your letters on Friday, so that I can read them over the weekend. Now, run along to your gym class. You may tell Mr. Stewart that you have been with me."

Sherlock slid out of the armchair and bowed, and then walked to the door as quickly as he could. But, just as he put his hand on the handle, a thought struck him, and he turned back. "Madame?"

"Yes?"

"What happened to Posy Fossil?"

A faraway look came into Madame's eyes. "Posy Fossil went to Czechoslovakia to train under Manoff, who was one of the greatest dancers of his time, when she was about your age, only a little older. After that . . . well, she made her own chances. That, my little pirate, is what people with special brains do best. They make their own chances, and then they seize those chances and run as far as they can. Remember that."

Sherlock nodded. Then he bowed again, left Madame's office, and scampered down the hall to the gym class.


	5. Restoration

**5. Restoration**

* * *

"Yesterday evening," Sherlock said through gritted teeth. "There can't have been so many customers that you wouldn't remember."

"All right, all right, calm down." The woman behind the counter at the costume shop pushed her square-framed glasses up on her nose as she paged through a ledger book. John thought that the combination of those frames, her spiky blonde hair, and her lumpy cardigan did not suit her at all well, although he conceded that a large part of the effect was probably the bored glare she had levelled at him and Sherlock when they entered.

"An elderly woman," Sherlock added, and John was almost certain that he was the only one who could detect the minute crack in Sherlock's voice. "Possibly with an oxygen tank."

"Describe her as much as you like," the woman behind the counter said. "I didn't see her. I was in the back." She ran her finger down a line of entries. "Aha. Here's the one you want. Serena!"

A small, dark woman hurried out from the back of the shop. "Yes, what is it? I've got that load of dresses from the Mermaid that all want new trimming."

"They can wait for a minute, can't they? These gentlemen want to ask you about last night. I think they might be with the police or something."

The blonde woman disappeared into the back of the shop, and Serena turned to Sherlock and John. "What is it? I was working last night, but we didn't have anything unusual happen. I don't think any of the neighbours did, either."

Sherlock put the work order down on the counter. "These ballet shoes. Were you there when they were picked up?"

Serena glanced at the work order. "Yes. That's why I was working late. Myra –" she nodded at the back door where the blonde woman had gone, "said that someone had called from that Fidolia Academy and asked if the shoes could be picked up special, around . . . oh, half eight? Myra said she'd pay for the overtime, and I had a wedding gown to work on while I waited, so it was fine."

"Someone came to pick up the shoes," Sherlock said. "Was it the same person who dropped them off?"

Serena shrugged. "I don't know. I wasn't there when they were dropped off. I do remember the woman picking them up. A little old lady, very tiny, but sort of grand, you know? Like . . . oh, those old pictures of Queen Mary, know what I mean?"

"I do," John said, before Sherlock could say anything nasty. "Do you remember anything else about her? How she was dressed, how she looked? Did she say anything to you?"

"Well." Serena pursed her lips. "She had on a coat and a hat, a little pillbox with a veil. Very Fifties. The coat was just a plain beige trench coat. A nice leather handbag – she paid in cash. Oh, and she had one of those portable oxygen tanks. You know, the ones on a little wheelie cart? With the tubes that go on your face? She was dragging that behind her. She signed for the shoes. Look."

Serena took a box from beneath the counter, pulled out a receipt, and put it on the table. The name _P. Fossil (Fidolia Academy)_ was scrawled in an untidy hand across the bottom. The script matched the note that Sherlock had found in Madame's flat.

Sherlock's shoulders sagged, just a little. "Did she say anything to you?"

"She thanked me. Said the shoes looked beautiful, and thanked me for taking care of them. It wasn't as if I'd done anything with them. I don't do shoe repair, just dresses, you know? Anyway, she had a taxi waiting, and she left the shop got in, and they drove off. That way." Serena pointed down the street. "I didn't do anything wrong, did I? I mean, those shoes. She didn't steal them, did she?"

"No," John assured her. "No, those shoes belonged to her. You've been very helpful, thanks." Sherlock had jammed his hands into his pockets and was staring resolutely at the floor, so John picked up the work order and steered Sherlock out onto the street.

"All right," he said, in an effort to draw something out of Sherlock. "Madame did pick up the shoes. Prearranged, but in secret. So Dorothy Robinson wouldn't know?"

Sherlock looked at the ground and said nothing. John sighed and glanced at his watch.

"Well, let's look for a cab. If the traffic's good, we can make it to meet that Patricia Bridger on time."

* * *

Sherlock's strange silence continued as the taxi wove through midday traffic. In and of itself, silence from Sherlock was nothing out of the ordinary, but this silence was unusual. It had neither the energy of his thinking silences, nor the black danger of a sulk. Instead, he seemed tense and almost fearful, which worried John, because very little could scare Sherlock Holmes. He cleared his throat awkwardly while he tried to think of something to say.

"Er . . . so you took classes at that Academy, yeah?" Sherlock made no response, but John thought that the silence grew a little bit less oppressive. "Ballroom dancing and gymnastics, I saw the photographs on the wall. Anything else?"

Sherlock's eyes flicked from his lap to John and then back to his lap again. "Madame persuaded my mother to let me join an acting class."

"Ah." That did make sense, now that John thought about it. After all, he had seen Sherlock impersonate other people countless times, and he knew that Sherlock could cry on cue. "You must have enjoyed that. How long were you there?"

Sherlock did not answer immediately, and John was half afraid that he'd crossed a line. "Until I was twelve," Sherlock said at last. "Mummy picked me up after class at the end of one term and told me that I wasn't going back. Said there wasn't enough money for lessons any more."

"Had to save up for school fees, then?"

Sherlock turned a withering glare on John. "Of course not. My father . . . didn't want to pay for lessons any more. That's all."

"That's all?"

"That's all. I don't know why he did that. It wasn't important, anyway." And Sherlock turned to stare out the window.

"All right. Fine. That's fine." John turned to look out his own window. He knew relatively little about Sherlock's childhood, but he did know Sherlock. And, no matter how many acting classes Sherlock had attended at posh children's stage schools, John could tell when Sherlock was lying.

* * *

Patricia Bridger turned out to be a solidly built woman on the far side of middle age with a strong handshake and a businesslike smile. "You're the ones who are looking for my Aunt Posy, aren't you?" she said. "Has something happened?"

"Well, we don't know yet," John said. "We're still trying to trace her. That's why we'd like to talk with your mother."

"Of course." Patricia ushered them into the lobby of the care home, where they signed a visitor log, and then led them out into a little courtyard. Sitting at a table beneath an umbrella was an ancient woman whose short hair was entirely white. "My mother, Petrova Fossil-Davies," Patricia said. "She's a bit deaf now, so you'll have to speak up. Mum!" she called.

Petrova raised her head. "Hm? Oh, Patricia. You've brought friends."

"They're investigators, Mum. They want to ask you some questions."

"Oh, dear. I don't like examinations. They make me nervous." Petrova peered anxiously at Sherlock and John.

"It's all right, Mrs. Fossil-Davies," John assured her. "It's not an examination. It's . . ." He fell silent, not certain how much he should reveal.

"Your sister Posy is missing," Sherlock said.

Petrova looked puzzled, then worried. "Oh, dear. Did she tell anyone where she was going?"

"No."

"She's probably at the ballet," Petrova said. "They're in London only for a little while. Did Garnie tell her she could go?"

Sherlock looked taken aback, as if he had to regroup and come up with a new strategy. "Garnie," he murmured to John. "That was the other name on the note that Madame left."

John who had had more experience dealing with elderly people unmoored in time than Sherlock had, leaned over and touched Petrova's hand. "I don't think Posy told Garnie anything. Maybe we could ask Garnie, if you told us who that is?"

"Garnie is our guardian," Petrova said. "Only we never call her Guardian. Much too long."

"Mum," Patricia put in, "do you mean Miss Brown?"

"Yes, Garnie's name was Brown. She gave us that name, before we changed it to Fossil."

Patricia nodded and turned to Sherlock. "That would be Sylvia Brown. She was – oh, I don't know, almost like a grandmother. I didn't see her very often. She lived in California for most of her life, even after my Aunt Pauline returned to England. Said the climate there agreed with her. But you'll have to forgive my mother, she forgets things now. Miss Brown died, oh, when was it? 1983, maybe? I don't remember. She left me a pocket watch."

Petrova reached across the table and took Sherlock's hand. "After Posy went missing, Gum and I moved into a little house near an aerodrome," she said. "That was in 1936. Just imagine how old I am! I learned to be a mechanic from Nobby Clark. Was he your father? You look like him."

The corners of Sherlock's mouth twitched in an involuntary little smile. "No. Nobby Clark is not my father. Posy has gone missing before?"

Petrova nodded. "She went to see Manoff. Imagine, all on her own, without telling a soul! Garnie was so worried. We all were."

Sherlock leaned a little closer to Petrova. "Where was this? Where did you wait for Posy?"

Petrova frowned a little. "At our house. The big one. Garnie had to sell it. They were going to turn it into a hotel."

"Where was it?"

"It was Gum's house. Pauline always said he was a taxi person. It was very far away from Brompton Road. Nana always made us save the penny and walk."

"Where did you walk from, Petrova?" Sherlock asked, his eyes shiny and intense.

"It was on Cromwell Road," Petrova said. "You could walk to the Victoria and Albert to see the dolls' houses on wet days."

Sherlock whipped out his mobile and began to enter information into it. John sighed.

"Thank you," he said. "You've been very helpful."

"Posy oughtn't to be at the ballet," Petrova said. "Not without permission. When you find her, tell her that she's been very naughty."

John forced a smile. "I'll do that."

Petrova nodded, and seemed to drift off into a reverie. Patricia nudged John and they walked a little bit away, where they would not disturb Sherlock, but Patricia could still keep an eye on Petrova. Patricia faced John with a worried frown and tight-set mouth. "Something really has happened to Aunt Posy, hasn't it?"

There was no getting around it. "We don't know for sure yet," John said, "but, informally . . . yes. I'd be surprised if she were all right when we found her."

"Well, then." Patricia took a pen and a notebook from her handbag and scribbled down a telephone number. "That's my mobile. Call me as soon as you hear anything."

"What about your mother? How do you think she'll handle it?"

Patricia shrugged. "I don't know. You can probably see that Mum's almost completely out of it. Been that way for several years now. Mum declined pretty quickly after Aunt Pauline died. It's possible she won't even notice, she spends so much time in the past anyway. And, to be honest, if this is what kills her . . . wouldn't be such a bad way to go, I suppose."

"Still, to lose your aunt and your mother at once? Wouldn't wish that on anyone."

"But to outlive both your sisters?" Patricia countered. "Don't know that I'd want Mum to go through that. But I suppose we'll have to burn that bridge when we come to it. Won't know how Mum'll react till we tell her, and we won't know what to tell her till you find out what happened to Aunt Posy."

"We'll do our best," John said.

Sherlock poked at his mobile and gave a harrumph. After a few seconds, he passed the device to Petrova. "That photograph," he said. "Was that the house where you lived as a child?"

Petrova took the mobile gently, and peered at it, twisting it this way and that, bringing it close to her face and moving it away again. "What a tiny picture," she said. "Design flaw. Someone should tell the engineers. No good to old people. Looks like a smudge of light."

But eventually, after a certain amount of repositioning and some assistance from Patricia, Petrova managed to find an angle at which she could see the photograph. "Oh, my goodness, yes," she said. "That looks very much like our front door. Funny to see it with that awning, and a name over top."

"Thank you, Petrova," Sherlock said. "We're going to go find Posy now."

"Tell her she's been a naughty girl."

Sherlock opened his mouth, but no words came out. Instead, he nodded, and then turned to John. "The Cromwell Manor Inn," he said. "Opened its doors in 1938, but the building was purchased in 1936."

"The year Petrova went to live near the aerodrome," John said. "Are you sure it's the right one? Lots of hotels in that area."

"This has to be the right hotel," Sherlock said. "Half an hour's walk to the Victoria and Albert, purchased in the correct year, over a mile away from Brompton Road, that's a significant walk for a child. It has to be the right hotel. We don't have time for it to be the wrong one. We've got to find Madame."

John nodded. They bade Patricia and Petrova goodbye, signed out in the visitor log, and went to find another taxi.


	6. 2005

**6. 2005**

* * *

Sherlock lay in his hospital bed trying desperately to sleep. But his head rang with pain, and he could not get warm. He shivered beneath the thin blankets, and clenched his teeth, and then finally, he could stand it no longer, and let out a thin wail. Almost immediately, the door opened, and a nurse was at his side. "Cold." Sherlock forced the word through chattering teeth. "Head hurts."

The nurse stuck a thermometer in his ear. "Fever's rising," she said, and left the room. She returned in a few minutes with another blanket, which she spread over Sherlock, and an ice pack for his head. "There. Try to sleep a bit."

Sherlock had hoped for paracetamol, but the ice pack felt surprisingly good. Between its cool weight and the warmth of the second blanket, Sherlock was able to relax just a little. He could hear voices outside his door. One voice belonged to Mycroft, which did not please Sherlock in the slightest. Now that Mycroft knew that Sherlock was here, it was only a matter of time before he came to stand over Sherlock and scold him in that superior, condescending tone that he had acquired at Oxford and mastered at Whitehall, clucking over what a disappointment Sherlock had turned out to be, and how upset Mummy was. Sherlock knew both of these things very well, and did not need Mycroft to tell him either one. He also knew that Mycroft would never say the things that Sherlock really wanted to hear.

The second voice was less familiar, but Sherlock placed it after a moment. It was practical, a bit gravelly, and affectedly world-weary, the voice of the police detective who occasionally dropped by the dealers' hangouts looking for information. Sherlock found him less unpleasant than the other detectives, because he would actually listen when Sherlock told him things. Twice, he had returned to report that he had solved a case with the information that Sherlock had given him, and on one of those occasions, he had taken Sherlock out to lunch as a reward. His name, Sherlock recalled through a haze of pain and fever, was Lestrade.

"With all due respect, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade was saying, "I've seen rather more of this sort of thing than you have."

"You do not know my brother, Detective Inspector." Mycroft's voice was icy. "Nor are you acquainted with the rest of my family."

"Fine. Your family isn't a perfect Happy Families picture. I understand that, I really do."

Sherlock pulled the blankets up to his chin. Neither one of them really understood anything.

"All I'm saying," Lestrade went on, "is that your brother is in that hospital room dying for want of someone to talk to. Isn't there anyone we can call?"

Sherlock could imagine Mycroft drawing himself up to his full height. "I have spoken with hospital management. They will be sending a psychiatrist directly."

There was a thump, as if someone had smacked the wall in frustration. "With respect, now you're really talking out your arse, Mr. Holmes," Lestrade said. "I've met the emergency psychiatrists. What about a friend? Is there a friend we can call?"

"How many friends do you think my brother has?"

There it was. That snide, superior tone that Mycroft always used when he deigned to discuss Sherlock's life choices with him. The tone that bragged that Mycroft had always managed to find ways to ingratiate himself, to bend the world to fit his peculiarities, and that Sherlock had always failed spectacularly to do the same. Mycroft was the golden son, and the entire family danced to his rising and his setting.

"Well," Lestrade sounded thoughtful, "when we brought him in, he was muttering something about a Mrs. Hudson. Do you know anything about her?"

"Out of the question," Mycroft said sharply. "I know exactly who she is, but I do not yet know what she is. All I know is that she was involved in the situation that led to Sherlock's . . . initial problems with controlled substances. She is not to be allowed anywhere near him until I have finished my enquiries."

Sherlock thought about Mrs. Hudson's cool, soft hands, bringing aloe lotion to smooth away the pain of a Pensacola sunburn, and how she had invited him into her home and listened to him pour out his troubles, for no other reason than that she was English, and he was English, and they were both so far away from home. He would have liked to have had her at his side now.

"Then think of someone," Lestrade said, in the same voice that he probably used to command his underlings. "Find Sherlock a friend, Mr. Holmes, or the next time you and I speak, it'll be at his funeral."

Footsteps strode away down the corridor. Sherlock waited for a long moment to see if Mycroft would come to see him. But instead, all he heard was Mycroft walking away in the other direction. He didn't know what to feel about that, so he closed his eyes and tried to escape into sleep.

* * *

By the next morning, Sherlock's fever had gone down, and the doctor declared that he could be placed on a clear liquid diet. That news cheered Sherlock, but his cheer quickly faded when he was confronted with a cup of overly sweet apple juice and a dish of wobbly, electric blue jelly that did not taste like any fruit that Sherlock could identify. He downed the juice in one gulp, but could not sustain interest in the jelly beyond a token spoonful or two. With a sigh, he put the dish on his bedside table and curled into his pillow.

He had only just entered the first phase of what promised to be a deep and satisfying sulk when there was a sharp knock on the door, entirely unlike the nurses' soft taps and the doctor's imperious harrumph. Startled, Sherlock rolled over and sat up, astonished at his visitor.

Madame had aged in the years since he had last seen her. She seemed smaller than he remembered, and the fiery red of her hair was less natural. But her presence had not diminished one bit. She still commanded the attention of a room simply by the poise and grace of her posture and the mischief that always sparkled behind her eyes. Sherlock moved before he could think about it, putting one hand over his heart and giving as much of a bow as he could manage from a hospital bed. "Madame."

"Sherlock Holmes," Madame said. "Oh, my little pirate."

She glided across the room and folded her arms around him, filthy, ill, and gaunt as he was, and cradled his head against her shoulder, heedless of his sweat-matted hair. Sherlock shuddered, and gulped a few deep breaths that brought the soothing odour of Madame's scent, but managed not to cry. Madame held him until he brought himself under control. Then she released him, and there was no judgement in her expression, only weariness and sadness.

"You shouldn't have come," Sherlock said. "Not to see me like this."

"Do you want me to leave?" Madame asked.

Horrified, Sherlock shook his head. "No! It's just that . . . you don't know why you're here."

"I was given to understand that you were ill and in need of a visit," Madame said.

Sherlock sighed. "It was my brother. Mycroft brought you here because that police detective told him that I needed a friend, and Mycroft couldn't think of anyone else, so he picked you up."

Madame waved this explanation away with a single, elegant gesture. "Oh, really. What does your brother matter to me? I don't do anything that I don't want to do. So, if I am here with you, my pirate child, then that is exactly where I want to be."

"I'm not your pirate child any more," Sherlock said, slumping back onto his pillow. "I'm – I'm a ruin, is what I am. I'll never be anything."

Madame did not reply immediately. She searched in her handbag and came up with a Polaroid, which she placed in Sherlock's hand. It was a snapshot of Sherlock at nine, in the Academy gym, smiling joyously as he saluted after a successful vault. The naïve happiness in the photograph now seemed so foreign to Sherlock that he could not bear to look, and he turned away. "I'm not that child any more."

"No," Madame said. "But that child is still you. You seized life with such fire and such determination, it was a joy to watch you perform. I know that that personality is still there. You have a special brain, the kind that doesn't fade."

"You're wrong," Sherlock spat. "You only think it doesn't fade because yours didn't. You got to dance, just as you were meant to do. There isn't any place like that for me. There's only . . . only . . . you'll be ashamed if I tell you."

"Ashamed? What should I be ashamed of? Illness? Injury? Those happen to everyone. They're a part of life, nothing more."

"Drugs." Sherlock's face burned, and he could barely choke the word out. Madame was silent, and her silence frightened Sherlock more than anything she, or Mycroft, or Lestrade, could have said. "Cocaine, mostly. I thought – I thought it might help. Might bring some order. To the chaos. In my head, it's all chaos. I just wanted it to stop – to stop _clanging_."

"Did it help?" Madame asked.

Her question brought Sherlock up short. None of the endless stream of police constables or doctors or counsellors that Mycroft had inflicted upon him had ever asked him that question. He found that he had to think for a moment before he could answer. "For a while," he said slowly. "It really did. I was still brilliant, but . . . there was focus. There was a _point._ Now . . . I don't know any more. It doesn't feel like it used to. Maybe it worked. Maybe I really am ordinary now." He didn't know whether that idea cheered him or not.

Madame considered him for a moment. Then, without saying a word, she rose from her chair. Still dressed in her street shoes, her slacks, and silk blouse, with no music, she began to dance. Like all the other children at the Academy, Sherlock knew that Madame had once been a very great dancer until an injury from a traffic accident on a slippery road had ended her career. But he had never realized just how deep her genius really was until he watched her dance for him in that dingy little hospital room.

Madame danced herself as she had once been, a skilled, graceful ballerina past the peak of her power, but still strong and lovely. Then she danced the traffic accident and showed how it had broken her ankle, and the months of healing and physical therapy that had followed. Sherlock could see that Madame would never again be the sort of dancer she had been. But, he realised, that did not mean that she was not still every inch a dancer. She danced herself rebuilding her technique, learning to get up on her pointes again, and exploring her gift for mime and her uncanny sense of how bodies fitted into space. Her days as a star ballerina were over, but her life as a teacher and choreographer had just begun. And as she danced herself beginning to teach, something clicked in Sherlock's mind.

Madame finished her dance and swept a graceful curtsey. Sherlock still could not muster a smile, but he clapped gently for her, taking care not to dislodge the IV line in his hand. "Thank you . . . Posy Fossil," he said, and then closed his eyes, waiting for Madame to scold him for his impertinence.

But Madame laughed instead. "Yes," she said. "Well done, my little pirate! My name is Posy Fossil."

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at her. "And Posina Fidolia?"

"A stage name." Madame smiled at the memory. "Manoff started it. He was of the old school, and he couldn't bear to think that the star of his company was called Posy Fossil. 'A ridiculous name,' he said, and he called me Posina when I danced. An equally ridiculous name, but he was the _maître_, and I was the dancer, and so I became Posina."

"Fidolia?"

"An honour. Given to Madame – my Madame, my first teacher. She gave me the skill and the technique that astounded Manoff, and it was because she had been ill that I sought him out at all. Even if I was obliged to dance with a new name, that name should at least point to who I really was. And everyone who matters knows that Posina Fidolia is Posy Fossil."

"Oh." Sherlock glanced away, wondering if this was yet another of those moments when he went too far and exposed things that it turned out that people would rather keep hidden.

But Madame must have seen something in his face just before he turned away, for she came to him and stroked her hand down his face. "That includes you. You matter. Don't ever forget that."

Sherlock lay back on his pillow. "I remembered," he said. "That story you told me, about Posy Fossil with the special brain, when you said that I had one, too. I looked you up once, at uni. I'd had a – a bad day. It took some digging, but I found enough records to learn that that little dancer in your story was . . . well, you."

Madame smiled at him. "That, my pirate, is a talent. It's not everyone who can do that."

"It's easy. Most people just never think to do it."

"You only say that because you have the brain that makes it easy." Madame took Sherlock's hand in hers and clasped it fiercely. "You have genius, Sherlock Holmes. You have a brain that is as valuable as my feet once were. When you have a gift like that, you must seize it, and nurture it. Whatever it takes, you must do it."

Something hot prickled behind Sherlock's eyes. "Like running away from home at eleven to go and dance for Manoff?" he asked.

"Like fleeing Czechoslovakia at fourteen, an entire ballet company, beneath the eyes of the Nazis," Madame replied. "Landing in New York with little more than what we stood up in. Traveling to California, which was much more difficult in 1939 than it is now, and rebuilding our lives and our company there. And then returning to England, to find bombed, rationed cities, and continuing to dance." Madame's eyes glittered at the memories.

"I'm not that kind of a hero," Sherlock said softly. "I'm not any kind of a hero."

"You don't have to be a hero," Madame said. "But you must be firm and stubborn enough to do what you want to do, what will make you happy. To follow your path and pay the price without complaining, because you can do no less. That is the burden for you to bear, my pirate child. Can you do that?"

Sherlock was silent for a long moment. He wondered what path, precisely, he was meant to follow. For Madame, it had been easy, to be little Posy Fossil, who always knew that she would become a great dancer. It was harder to be Sherlock Holmes, whose only comfort came in small doses doled out by a Detective Inspector who didn't trust Sherlock farther than he could throw him. But Madame was waiting for an answer.

"I'll think about it," he said.

Madame nodded, as if he had given her exactly the response she had hoped to hear. "You will," she said. "But for now, you are ill, and you must recover your strength. Have you had anything to eat?"

Sherlock turned and glanced at the dish of blue jelly, which had begun to melt and looked even more alarming. Madame followed his gaze and recoiled in horror.

"That," she declared, "is not food at all. A good beef consommé will do you much more good. I shall find that useless brother of yours and see to it that he brings you proper food. How can you find your path until you've been fed?"

She rose to her feet and kissed his forehead once. Then she turned and glided out of the room, presumably to find Mycroft. Sherlock imagined his tall, dignified brother withering beneath the force of Madame's will, and he found himself smiling for the first time in weeks.


	7. Near The Cradle Seen

**7. Near The Cradle Seen**

* * *

Sherlock had not wanted to wait for a single minute before going to investigate the Cromwell Manor Inn. But John had overruled him, insisting that Lestrade and his warrant card would be able to expedite things once they were there, which would more than make up for the time spent calling him to the scene. Now, as they approached the hotel, John was glad that he had insisted. Sherlock looked as though he would start shouting at anyone who did not produce Madame, alive and healthy, the instant he walked in the door. Just before they entered, Lestrade turned to Sherlock, his expression grave.

"We're going to get this done, Sherlock," he said. "And we're going to do it right. I promise. But you need to cooperate. Let me speak first. You look around the lobby, see if there's anything you can find out." Sherlock opened his mouth, but Lestrade shook his head. "We'll find her. I promise you."

Sherlock nodded, and Lestrade led the way into the hotel. The lobby was small and elegant, and one wall was filled with photographs detailing the history of the place. Sherlock immediately went to examine these, while John followed Lestrade to the registration desk. A young clerk in a blue waistcoat smiled at them.

"May I help you, gentlemen?" she asked.

Lestrade flashed his warrant card. "Detective Inspector Lestrade, Scotland Yard," he said. "I'm performing a welfare check on a woman we believe checked in sometime last night."

The clerk raised her eyebrows. "I only came on duty at seven. Um . . . is there a name?"

Lestrade glanced at John. John frowned. "She might have used one of a couple of names. Either Posina Fidolia or Posy Fossil. Do you have anyone by that name?"

The clerk entered some information into her desk computer. After a moment, she looked up. "I have a Posy Fossil registered here. Last night, at . . . er . . . a quarter to eight. That's odd."

"What is?" John asked.

"She didn't book ahead. Most of our guests do."

John sighed, and glanced over at Sherlock. "I suspected as much."

"We'll need to check on her," Lestrade said. "Can you tell us which room she's in?"

The clerk blushed. "I'd have to get the manager."

"Do that. We'll wait."

The clerk disappeared into a back room. John went to stand by Sherlock. "She checked in here last night," he said softly.

"I know. I heard." Sherlock gazed at the photographs on the wall. "History of the area. That one was taken on the day the hotel opened, 1938." He moved a little bit further down the line of framed pictures. "That was when it was still a private home."

Madame's home, he didn't say. John gazed at the photograph. It showed a man about Sherlock's age and a young girl, both wearing greasy overalls, standing in front of the house, leaning against an old-fashioned car. John wondered if the girl might be Madame or one of her sisters. With the exception of the awning and the sign out front, the exterior of the building had not changed much since the photograph had been taken.

There was a polite cough behind them. They turned around to see a man in a suit. Pinned to his lapel was a nameplate identifying him as the manager, Mr. Titon. "Excuse me," he said. "Winnie called me in, said someone was doing a welfare check?"

Lestrade stepped forward. "Yes. Detective Inspector Lestrade, Scotland Yard." He shook hands with Mr. Titon. "Your clerk said that you could tell us where to find a Ms. Posy Fossil. I've been asked to check up on her."

Mr. Titon nodded. "Of course. She rang last night, asked for a room. Didn't book her into the computer, she said she was on her way. Funny thing, she specifically asked for a room on the top floor." He went to the registration desk and collected a key card.

"Did you see her when she arrived?" John asked.

Mr. Titon nodded, and led them to the stairs. "Little old lady, very small. Didn't have much luggage, which was odd. Just a handbag, a shopping bag, and one of those portable oxygen tanks. Took it directly to the staircase, never even noticed when I tried to show her the lift. Why she'd want to drag something like that up all these steps is beyond me."

"How did she look when you saw her?"

Mr. Titon paused on the landing and thought. "Couldn't tell you. Like a sweet old granny. Perhaps a bit pale, but that could have been the lighting in the lobby."

"Go on," Sherlock said. "Take us to her. Now."

"Sherlock." John held out his arm to stop Sherlock from grabbing at Mr. Titon's jacket.

They climbed the last few flights of stairs, and Mr. Titon led them to a door at the end of the hallway. He glanced at Lestrade once, and then knocked on the door.

There was no answer. Mr. Titon knocked again.

"Ms. Fossil?" he called. "Ms. Fossil, it's the manager. You all right?"

Still, no answer came.

"Ms. Fossil, I have the police with me," Mr. Titon said. "They're here to check up on you. You all right in there?" When there was still no answer, he took a deep breath. Lestrade nodded to him, and he fished in his pocket for the key card. "Ms. Fossil, we're coming in."

The key card clicked in the lock, and Mr. Titon opened the door. The curtains were still closed, and the room was dark. Sherlock fumbled for the light switch, and gave it a vicious slap when he finally found it.

A light over the door gave them just enough illumination so that John could rush to the window and open the curtains. Daylight poured into the room, revealing Madame Posy Fossil, lying serene and composed on the bed, wearing a plain blue dress. Her oxygen tank stood nearby, its tubing and nasal cannula coiled neatly around its frame. A coat hung on a coat hanger in the wardrobe. There was a string of coral beads around Posy's throat, and she clasped a pair of old, faded ballet shoes in her hands. When John touched her face, she was cold.

He looked up just in time to see a last dim ray of hope flicker out in Sherlock's face. "How long?" Sherlock choked out.

John tugged at Posy's hand, and found that it was stiff. "She's in full rigor mortis. At least six to eight hours, likely a bit longer. There was nothing you could have done, Sherlock. I'd guess she was dead even before Mycroft phoned this morning."

No one spoke for a moment. Sherlock's face went slack, but his eyes burned. He took a few stumbling steps toward the bed, and reached out his hand as if to touch Posy's body, but pulled it back. He looked up, and glanced from John to Lestrade as if seeing them for the first time. As a doctor and as a friend, John knew his duty. There was nothing he could do for Posy. It was Sherlock who needed him now. John placed a steadying hand on Sherlock's back.

"Come on," he said quietly. "Let's give Lestrade some room to work." Lestrade took the hint and pulled out his mobile. As John guided Sherlock back out into the hall, he could hear Lestrade calling for medical support. John turned Sherlock so that he stood with his back to the wall, and then pushed at his shoulder in an effort to get him to sit down on the floor.

"Sit down before you fall down," he said. "Won't do anyone any good if you collapse and we have to take you to hospital."

"I'm not going to collapse," Sherlock growled. "I can't collapse. I haven't finished. Where are the records, the hotel records? I need to see them."

"Sherlock, calm down. I know you're upset –"

"I am _not_ upset!" Sherlock cried. "I need to see the hotel records!" He turned the full force of his glare on Winnie, who had just come up to the top floor. "Get me the hotel records!"

Winnie jumped. Mr. Titon emerged from Posy's room. "Ah," he said, smiling a tight, mirthless little smile. "Winnie, stay here, assist the Inspector with whatever he needs. There'll be paramedics arriving shortly." He turned to Sherlock. "Er, in the meantime, can I be of help?"

Sherlock swallowed. "I want to see the purchase records for this building. Where are they?"

Mr. Titon blinked. "Um. Well. I think we might have a set of documents in the office. If you would care to follow me?" He went to the stairs.

Sherlock hesitated, glancing back at the room where Posy's body lay. John took his arm. "It's all right, Sherlock," he said. "Lestrade is with her. He'll take care of her."

Sherlock bowed his head and allowed John to walk him down the stairs.

* * *

They caught up with Mr. Titon in the hotel's office, as he rooted through an old cardboard banker's box. John pushed Sherlock to sit down in a chair. "Can I get you anything?" Mr. Titon asked.

"The purchase records," Sherlock said.

"Cup of tea," John said. "Three sugars."

Mr. Titon gave a weak nod, and phoned the kitchen. The tea arrived within minutes, and John pushed the cup into Sherlock's hand.

"Drink that," he said. "Doctor's orders."

At last, Mr. Titon pulled a yellowing folder from the bottom of the box. "Here we are," he said. "Nothing unusual. Purchased 1936, by Mr. Douglas Manning, he's the grandfather of the present owner. Purchased from . . . let me see . . . a Miss Sylvia Brown."

"Garnie," Sherlock said. He relaxed a little in his chair and breathed in the steam from the tea.

"Oh, were you interested?" Mr. Titon asked. "Er – friend of the family?"

Sherlock shook his head. "No."

Mr. Titon waited, but Sherlock said nothing more. He turned a puzzled expression to John.

"Don't worry about Ms. Fossil," John said. "In fact, I promised I'd notify her niece once we'd found her." He took out his mobile, and Mr. Titon nodded. He replaced the purchase record in the box as John rang Patricia Bridger.

* * *

Patricia and Petrova had clearly been waiting for John's call, ready to go, for Patricia's car drew to a stop in front of the hotel before the police and the paramedics had left. John had delegated the task of meeting them to himself and Sherlock, primarily to keep Sherlock out of the way of the paramedics. When Patricia's car arrived, John helped Petrova out of the car as Patricia retrieved her mother's walking frame from the back seat and unfolded it.

Petrova paused for a moment on the pavement to gaze at the building. "Will you look at that?" she said. "Brings me right back to when I was a little girl." She spotted Sherlock and trundled her walker over to him. "Did you find Posy?"

Sherlock flushed pink, and his mouth worked silently for a moment before he spoke. "Yes. I did. She – she's dead."

John hurried to Petrova's side, in case she might collapse at hearing the news broken so bluntly. But Petrova simply nodded, as though she had been expecting exactly this outcome. "Where is my sister?" she asked.

"She's upstairs," John said. "She asked for a room on the top floor."

"Of course." Petrova nodded. "Our rooms. Nana would still call them the nursery, of course, even after Pauline and I began working. You would think that a child old enough to go on stage would be too old for a nursery, but I suppose it's because of Posy. I'd like to go and see her."

Patricia shot a glance at John, clearly feeling that he was the one in charge. John nodded. "The paramedics haven't brought her down yet. I'll go upstairs and make sure it's all right; I'm sure they won't mind. Sherlock, can you help Mrs. Fossil-Davies get to the lift?"

Sherlock nodded, and bent down to offer Petrova his arm.

"There's a lift now? Gum will enjoy that," Petrova told him approvingly, as John hurried inside.

When Petrova made her way to the top floor, Lestrade waved for quiet, and all of the workers stood back so that she could approach her sister's body. Petrova gazed down at Posy, and stroked Posy's hair before covering Posy's hands with her own. "Her mother's ballet shoes," she said softly. "She loved those shoes, even after she outgrew them."

The medical examiner cleared her throat. "We think that your sister went to sleep without her oxygen tubes," she said. "She couldn't get enough air during the night, and she'd placed the tank too far away to reach."

Petrova nodded. "Well."

She stood up, and turned around until she spotted Sherlock. "Thank you," she said, "for finding Posy."

Sherlock shook his head. "I didn't find her in time."

"Nonsense," Petrova replied. "You found her exactly as she wished to be found. Posy lived to dance, ever since she was a very little child. I'm sure she simply hated being tethered to that tank all the time."

"You think it was . . . intentional?" Lestrade asked.

Petrova smiled fondly at Posy. "Posy always did make her own decisions. Once she made up her mind to do something, she always found a way. Pauline only went to Hollywood for Posy's sake, you know, so that Posy could dance with Manoff." She sighed, and turned to Patricia. "Now there's the funeral to arrange, I suppose. I think I'll need a little rest first."

Mr. Titon stepped forward. "Of course. Would you care to wait in my office?"

"Thank you," Petrova said. "That's very kind of you. I haven't been in this house since I was a girl." She allowed Mr. Titon to escort her and Patricia out of the room.

Lestrade cast a worried glance at Sherlock. "No foul play," he said. "I think we can handle it from here. I'll contact the Academy. You two should go home. You look about as worn out as the sister."

Sherlock nodded, and turned to leave, but Lestrade put a hand on his shoulder. "Sherlock . . . I'm sorry about your teacher."

Sherlock paused, and took one last look at Posy. "She was a proper genius," he said, and then stalked out of the hotel room, his head held high, and John at his heels.

* * *

A few days later, John posted a link on his blog to the _Guardian_'s obituary notice for the famous former ballerina Posina Fidolia. Posy's funeral had been small and private, and Sherlock had not attended, although John suspected that he might be able to entice Sherlock into going to the memorial concert that the Academy would be staging in a month.

Sherlock stood at the window, playing scales on his violin. Something caught his attention, and he craned his neck to see. "The post has arrived," he announced, and then returned to his scales.

John checked to make sure that his post was formatted properly, and then hurried downstairs. He had taken on the task of collecting and sorting the post while Mrs. Hudson recovered from her recent encounter with an arsonist that Sherlock had been hunting. John dropped off Mrs. Hudson's portion of the post, declined her offer of tea, and took the rest upstairs.

He pulled a stiff cardboard mailer from the pile and handed it to Sherlock. "This one's for you, from the Academy," he said. "I thought you had decided not to take any money from them."

"I did decide that." Sherlock set his violin down in its case and peeled the mailer open. He extracted a piece of stationery folded around a photograph. As he glanced between the letter and the photograph, he went very still, and his eyes took on a faraway look.

Curious, John twitched the photograph out of Sherlock's unresisting fingers. It was a black-and-white image of Posy Fossil that John guessed had been taken in the 1950s, what would have been the peak of her career. In the photograph, Posy wore a leotard trimmed with smooth, patterned feathers at the shoulders and the waist. A short skirt, also made of patterned feathers, sprayed out about her hips. She balanced on one toe, her other leg drawn up, her lithe body forming a graceful C-curve. Her arms were raised to complete the gesture, and she looked into the camera with a joyous smile on her face. Printed in the white border below the image were the words _Posina Fidolia, "Birds of North America," 1951._ The photograph was signed, in a sprawling hand, _To dear Madame, with much Love, your Posy_.

"Dorothy Robinson sent it to me," Sherlock said, his voice slurring a little. "With the official thanks of the Fidolia Academy of the Performing Arts. I never saw her dance, John. Not really, not the way she did before her accident."

John looked again at the photograph and tried to imagine the flow of graceful motion that had produced such a still image. "She never saw the best of your genius, either. But . . . I think that you and she both saw what you needed to see." He slid the photograph back into the mailer to protect it. "We'll have this framed," he said, and set the mailer down by his laptop.

Sherlock gave a tiny smile, and turned to pick up his violin again.

* * *

END

* * *

Afterword: Many thanks to everyone who has read and enjoyed this story. I'm so thrilled to see how many other people turn out to be fans of both _Ballet Shoes_ and _Sherlock_! Who knew there were so many? I'm not alone! I had a tremendous amount of fun planning and researching and writing this, and I hope you had as much fun reading it.

The idea seemed almost absurd when I first thought of it. I'd been rereading _Ballet Shoes_, and somehow, it occurred to me that, in both _Ballet Shoes_ and _Sherlock_, the city of London is portrayed in loving detail, almost as though it is a secondary character in its own right. I also started thinking of how _Sherlock_ is a world without the iconic character of Sherlock Holmes, and I wondered what detective would have taken his cultural place. I settled on Poe's C. Auguste Dupin, who was one of Conan Doyle's models for Sherlock Holmes, and thought that, in the world of _Sherlock_, the actor William Gillette, who in our world made his fortune being the first iconic portrayer of Sherlock Holmes, would have played Dupin instead.

Thinking along those lines led me to _Ballet Shoes_ and its companion books, where it's hinted that Pauline Fossil replaces the real-life Vivien Leigh in _Gone With The Wind_. A world where William Gillette played Auguste Dupin and a world where Pauline Fossil played Scarlett O'Hara could perhaps . . . coincide. And that was the spark that led to a crossover. After that, I had to find a way to make the timelines work – _Ballet Shoes_ is set in the 1930s, while _Sherlock_ is in the present day, and the two eras almost don't overlap. That was what led to the scenes of Sherlock and Madame through the years.

Thank you so much for reading. I'll see you next time.


End file.
